The Boulder Community Network is dedicated to providing free community
access to networked community information to promote the
spirit of community and meet the information needs of Boulder County
residents.

Non-commercial Focus:

BCN concentrates its efforts on segments of the community
and categories of information that are not adequately
served by the commercial sector, in much the same way that public
libraries and public broadcasting stations operate.

Owned by about 100 information providers, mostly local non-profit
organizations. We started off hosting the City of Boulder,
and even helping a regional business publication get on the web, but
most of the big organizations now have graduated to their own site.

NTIA TIIAP grants: $250,000 in September of 1994 for 18 months,
$280,000 in Oct of 1996 for 18 months for One Stop Career Network,
and involvement in a more recent BASIN grant
from the EPA.
There was lots of local support for the grants also.

Funding:

We currently operate with an all-volunteer staff and a
budget of just $1000 or $2000 per year, plus continuing help from
the University of Colorado to support the computer and networking.

More people looking for defects means more defects are
found and fixed.

Free from marketing considerations, developers release
more fixes and improvements, more often.

Proprietary software does not guarantee quality, in
order to avoid legal liability.

Source code availability allows users to fix, customize
or improve on their own. The report includes a summary of
free and open source software policy development and
activity in nations throughout the world.

Open Source software is used to run most web servers in the
world (apache, webiso, shibboleth, slash, etc.)
Currently gaining popularity for desktop users,
especially Linux and OpenOffice and the
Mozilla/Netscape browser. See also: mailman, wiki, etc.

OpenOffice: alternative to Microsoft Office. All
OpenOffice.org files are stored in an XML format by default. Any
document created in OpenOffice.org can be read by any XML
enabled tool and be processed, transformed, or archived in an
application and vendor independent way.

Slackware Linux
is a version of Linux popular for use on older and less powerful
computers, such as 486's. The
RULE project is working on the same goal.

KNOPPIX
- an easy-to-try version of Linux. This CD-ROM is
free and legal and all the updates to it will be free. It has
all the software you need to develop web pages, run a library
website, write memos in Bulgarian or English, browse the
Internet, and collaborate with others via Internet email, etc.
Even if the other people are using Microsoft Word, Excel,
Powerpoint, etc. BCN uses Linux software, and some BCN people
use only this software. You can run it in most PCs, and don't
even have to install it or modify any existing files on the
disk - just boot from the CD. Works best with 128 MB of RAM or more.

My early Portland City Club talk
Local Civic Information on the Internet given in April 1996 and
targeted at the general public. Examples of civic networks in
Oregon and specific local sites of interest.